


here i am, and there you are

by freloux



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 22:36:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5350937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there are rules. clara wasn't supposed to be one of them. set after 'before the flood.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	here i am, and there you are

The Doctor has returned. He doesn't seem that different from before: he still regards her as though he's holding her at a distance. Very careful, very delicate, until there are those random moments that he snaps at her, grumpy and tired with humans and how he perceives them.

But if she looks harder, she can see a bit of a crack now. A tiny, almost barely perceptible shift in the part of the time-space continuum that is the Clara-Doctor constant. They are both caught in a question that they've been hovering at the edge of for a very long time. Which is why she stands in front of him now not as the 'Impossible Girl,' not as his companion, but simply Clara. Clara, who he risked his life and his timeline to save. Smaller than him, but with more than enough personality to make up for it. This is what he came back for. What he will come back for, time and again. "What did you think about when you were there?" Clara asks. She needs to know, even if she can't fully remember why, or where he went.

He frowns, stutters, runs a hand through his hair. He can do this again, he figures. Hide behind this, the not-your-boyfriend, the duty-of-care, pretending that everything is fine even though it's very clearly not. "Um. How I might not see you again, really. That was mostly it. Of course there was the small matter of, er, not creating a horrible time paradox and avoiding my own death. But you were in there, too. I think."

It's vague, but answer enough. "There's something I want to try," Clara says.

"What _now_?" he responds, exasperated as usual.

When it starts, the kiss feels like when she first hugged him. Stiff, resistant. Perhaps even a bit overwhelmed, like he's trying to process what's happening as quickly as possible. She pulls away and looks up at him. "You've got -" she smiles, gestures. He's a bit pink around the mouth, her lipstick kissed off and transferred.

There's so much that she wants to show him. But she remembers what a battle even a simple hug was. So she teaches him, patient. (She's always patient with him - though there are times when she's not sure she should be.) "What does that feel like?" she asks, taking his hand.

"Like skin." He rolls his eyes. "Warm. Soft. A little tacky from the lotion you're always using."

"And this?" Slow, so slow. Careful. Afraid that this, too, is going to be some kind of reset button.

She watches his eyes. The tiniest movement downwards, studying how his fingers are pushing inside her.

"Skin, still. Wet. It feels like you," he says simply. He talks her through it, adjusts his fingers. How she trembles, says _just like that_.

They're going to work through this, they are. The lingering fear. When she touches him back, he makes a tiny noise in his throat at the sensitivity. Or perhaps it's shock: that someone can actually hold him without being a ghost, moving through and past his skin. That someone would want to touch him without hurting him instead. She takes off her shirt, then unhooks her bra, and he swallows, surveys. "Like what you see?" she asks in an attempt to break the tension. "You know, you can touch me if you want." His hands are cold - a holdover from the suspended animation, she assumes. He explores over her, watching the way she squirms, how her nipples are touch-sensitive.

Clara wonders if she can get him to this. She's so tired of waiting. She wonders if he's tired of waiting, too. So Clara kisses him again and presses her bare skin to the fabric of his shirt. Catches her hands at his coat, tries to reach up and push it off his shoulders. Tries to make it fluid, sexy: everything she pictured when she imagined what this would be. It isn't, not at all. They end up knocking into one of his amps, tipping over a guitar; it falls over with a loud, musical jumble. There are a lot of arms and legs in the way. She keeps forgetting that he's so much taller than her that there's just more of him to deal with. Eventually, though, they end up on the floor with his coat off, shirt tugged up, boxers and trousers a pool next to them. Most of her clothes have been discarded along the way. Their last defenses gone.

She hasn't done this in so long, she'd forgotten what this feels like. To be opened up like this, stroked at from the inside. He watches her carefully as he thrusts into her. It's a shuddering, stop-start sort of motion that suggests he hasn't done this in awhile, either. "Is - is this alright?" he asks. Sweaty hands on her arms, holding her. "Yeah," she responds. She's not sure what else she could, or should say. She hopes that the way she's twisting against him answers it for him. To be doing this here, now, after all that happened, seems to prove his presence irrevocably. The solid firmness of his weight on top of her, how he moves thickly inside her. That he came back. That he's hers.


End file.
